


Big Houses

by athena_crikey



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Angst, M/M, New Relationship, Peter has a crush, h/c, nightingale loses his magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-05-26 14:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6244321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightingale loses his magic, forcing Peter to face any number of unpleasant futures, the most alarming of which doesn't contain Nightingale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i got a soft spot in my heart for your ancient books and horror stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pudupudu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pudupudu/gifts).



> Gift for Pudupudu, who drafted the overarching plot. The outline is hers, the mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Title from [Big Houses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIK0Abrl8XY) by Squalloscope.

I woke up with the sky still dark to find the gas fire in my room already rippling away behind its glass frame, a woolly blanket draped over the foot of my bed like some particularly overfed St Bernard. The windows in the dining room, its fire spurned by Molly’s economizing, had been painted over with delicate frost fronds. Outside there were icicles hanging from gutters and frozen puddles already shattered by those children too excited by the thought of mischief to stay in and eat a decent breakfast.

London’s port had made the city once upon the time; today mostly what it made it was sodding _cold_. The damp from the sea settled into your bones like liquid nitrogen, coating them over and freezing you out until moving was nearly impossible. 

However the Met, like Her Majesty’s Mail, is not stopped by rain nor snow etc., and Nightingale is one man who actually knows winters today are nothing like the ones they’d had when he’d been a lad – snow unfettered by Global Warming, with horses slipping and skidding on the cobbles and hoar frosts that painted whole trees white. 

As such, the bitter sun-up found the two of us on patrol near Bayswater, looking for signs of an escaped chimera. Patrolling was a constable’s task, but dealing humanely with people who were half-wolf, or with prehensile tails, or suffering the awkward problem of teeth in the vagina, required considerably more finesse – not to mention firepower. So we compromised and went together. We didn’t bring Toby; he had a nose for the uncanny but exposing him to were-people wasn’t in any way fair to him.

The one upside of it all was that we were in a swank part of town and not anywhere near Kentish Town, where my new clothes would be met with scorn from the children and derision from my old mates. Nightingale, refusing to allow me to patrol in my puffer coat, had insisted on my purchasing a heavy-weight navy pea coat and on accompanying me to buy it, as though I might renege when out from under his watchful eye and purchase a canvas cowboy coat. The coat he suggested – with a look in his eye that said it could become an order if not taken in the proper sentiment – was I had to admit, a beautiful piece of tailoring, and it fit me like a glove. 

When I had baulked at the cost he shelled out from the Folly’s private fund – “I recall you swore obedience to the clothing of our fellowship,” was all he had said, handing over his credit card. The idea of Nightingale buying me clothes made me uncomfortable, but it was hard to tell if that was wounded pride or a kind of nervous thrill at being so appreciated. Wearing my usual street jeans with it seemed a travesty, so I paired it with posher slacks, and hoped I didn’t meet anything with teeth bigger than a Pomeranian’s. 

In fact, what we ran into was a perfectly nice young girl with unnaturally long legs clad in striped nylon tights and a hint of a green scaly tail protruding from under her long coat. She blinked once at the sight of us – mismatched green and blue eyes, with an unnatural stare to them – then took off. And Christ, could she run. Her legs spun like a bicyclist’s as she sped off, her long tail snapping out straight behind her. I shot off after her, Nightingale beside me at first but quickly falling off – a life running from a hoard of older cousins, aunts, uncles and distant relatives had given me an impressive turn of speed. She cut around a corner into a long alley and I followed, skidding but keeping my balance on a long frozen puddle in a low dip of the road. 

As I accelerated up the road I heard a cry from behind me, and the rough rip of cloth dragging against asphalt. I glanced over my shoulder and stumbled to an awkward stop, breath catching in my throat.

Nightingale was lying in the road on his side, unmoving. On the frost-bleached pavement, dark blood was already beginning to pool beneath his head. Passers-by were already starting to stop and stare, some hurrying over. 

For a sliver of a second I felt my heart constricting in my chest, the entirety of the world greying out except for that one bright shock of blood. Nightingale’s eyes were closed, the delicate lines of his cheekbones casting sharp shadows across his skin. Near his feet the pool of ice was now cracked, white spider web-lines splitting the surface.

Then the world unfroze and I moved, running back. I got there before the rest of the crowd, pushing away his cashmere scarf and feeling for a pulse with my heart in my mouth. I found it: strong and speeding although slowing already. The blood was coming from a cut over his eyebrow; it would bruise like hell, probably. Nightingale wouldn’t like that, although his attention to his appearance had always seemed more manners than vanity. 

I had my phone out in an instant, calling an ambulance and glancing up to get the street address. 

While I crouched there on the line with dispatch I considered taking off my coat and wrapping him in it, but that was nonsense; his own beautiful woollen Belstaff was both longer and warmer than mine. I also thought about pulling him up off the cold pavement to hold him, but the cardinal rule of head-wounds is: Don’t move them until assessed. And besides, this was Bayswater on a Tuesday morning, not some Hollywood film. You don’t go around holding your superior in your arms like a chick-flick hero.

Not even if maybe you want to.

  
***

The benefit of being a world-renowned gastroenterologist is that you have privileges at most London hospitals. The benefit of being a DCI with the ability to blow things up with your mind is that you get transferred _very quickly_ to the facility of your physician’s choice as soon as your condition permits.

Nightingale was therefore soon back at UCH, his old stomping ground, lying unconscious in a bed with the usual monitors and drip cords. I sat beside him in the standard one-size-fits-no one moulded plastic chair watching Dr Walid read notes on his iPad. I mean, I assume that’s what he was doing; he could have been playing Scrabble for all I knew. I was making a Herculean effort to appear unperturbed by the whole scene; somehow it had been so much easier two years ago. Back when me and Nightingale had been practically strangers to each other, when even a gunshot wound was alarming but not decimating. Now he’d only slipped on some ice and given his head a crack, and I was sweating bullets.

“CT shows some bleeding,” said Dr Walid, still staring intently at his iPad. They had put stitches in Nightingale’s head down in A&E three just over the eyebrow. They were covered now with a waterproof patch; it didn’t conceal the bruise that was already rising.

“There was a lakefull of it at the scene,” I said. Dr Walid glanced up and I realised his meaning even before he elaborated, a cold chill settling in my stomach.

“No, Peter, on the brain. Not enough to consider stenting yet, but it’s not ideal.”

Not words you ever want to hear from a doctor. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, choked, and had to take a drink of the water provided for Nightingale. Well, he wasn’t using it. 

“So what do we do?”

Dr Walid shrugged, lowering the tablet. “Wait. We won’t know more until he wakes. The likelihood of damage is remote, but we will need to assess him when he awakens.”

“And when will that be?” 

“Anytime in the next few hours. Or even longer, possibly. I’m afraid it’s a wait and see game now, Peter,” he said, sympathetically. 

“Right,” I said, rather helplessly. “I’ll just lay in some grapes then, shall I?”

  
***

Concussions aren’t an unknown beast to those with a tendency to rush head-first into a fray; like professional athletes, coppers see more than their fair share of them. I therefore wasn’t expecting blindness, or loss of identity, or any of the other standard telly tropes. I _was_ expecting Nightingale to feel wretched, probably nauseous and sensitive to light and noise.

In fact, in the early stages of consciousness nearly the first thing he tried to do was burrow under his pillow, arm thrown over his eyes and supple spine curving as he turned to try to escape the lights. I stood and turned them off, and gradually he relaxed. It was several minutes before he blinked into real wakefulness, looking up at me crookedly from his now-curled position in the bed. It was a shock to see him look so… _human_. With his usual upright carriage and Savile Row suits and cane, he maintains a kind of glamour that has nothing to do with magic, only intensity of training: a subconscious projection of superiority. Even during his last hospitalization he had lain pale and straight in his bouts of unconsciousness like a stone effigy, and kept his face and form under strict control when conscious – even when he was nearly trembling in pain. 

Nightingale has lived through so many agonies that I’m not sure his bearing up under pain is so much stoicism as experience. Despite that, I’ve never had the sense that the physical pain he’s endured has come within sight of the mental. I wonder, sometimes, whether it’s duty alone that keeps him living a life full of the shades and spectres of his past – and wonder too when the well of that dutifulness will run dry.

“Sir?” I said, softly. “It’s Grant. You’re in hospital; you’ve hit your head. Can you answer me?” I considered fetching a doctor, but Nightingale wouldn’t thank me for it; all they would want to do would be shine lights in his eyes and pull him up to probe his reflexes. 

Nightingale made a soft sound in the back of his throat, opening one grey eye to stare up at me. After a moment he rolled his head on the pillow, eyes closing tight with pain before slanting open again. Under the stitches his left eye was beginning to be pressed down beneath the weight of the swelling; his right was heavy-lidded and unfocused. “Peter,” he said, voice gravelly.

“That’s right, sir. Do you want me to fetch you some ice chips? Or…” I trailed off, seeing the way he winced at the sound of my voice. I was already nearly whispering; I could only imagine the booming tones he must be hearing.

“What happened? …The chimera?” he asked, dry tongue darting out to lick his lips. I felt a pang of guilt for having finished off the water. 

“More or less, sir. We were chasing her and you lost your footing going round a corner. Caught your head a right crack on the pavement.” I truly was whispering now; Nightingale seemed to appreciate it. 

Behind me the door opened and a nurse bustled in, glancing at Nightingale and then the screen beside him displaying his vitals. Nightingale who, suddenly, had pulled into his usual formal stiffness. “How long has he been awake?” she asked me, giving a rather disapproving look; apparently she expected to have been fetched. 

I shrugged. “Only a minute.”

“He’d better see the doctor.” She disappeared and Nightingale relaxed a little, head dropping back against his pillow. 

“Abdul?” murmured Nightingale, eyes closed. 

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s one mercy,” he sighed. A moment later he was out again.

  
***

As much as it would have set my mind at ease to spend the day at Nightingale’s bedside waiting for a surer sign he hadn’t lost an important part of his brain, I was now the only standing member of the Folly and had work to do. Namely going back to inform Molly we were on high alert. With Nightingale down in hospital the Folly was at its most vulnerable and the Faceless Man was still out there somewhere with his disciple, presumably hungry for a chance to strike at us.

Molly took the news badly. Teeth were barred. I protested that it hadn’t been my fault, and in her eyes that seemed only to incriminate me further; she gave me a black glare and then turned to slip silently away into one of the Folly’s numerous dark corridors. A moment later she was gone. 

I spent the afternoon searching HOLMES 2 for reports of our waylaid chimera; bulletins on a young woman with unnaturally long legs and a tail were surprisingly thin. By dinner-time I had done nothing worthwhile, failed to learn anything new, and really might as well have spent my day idling at Nightingale’s bedside for all the good I had done. 

I was most of the way through supper when the phone rang out in the atrium; Molly disappeared from the dining room to answer it. A moment later she was back, hands twitching nervously on her apron. “For me?” I asked, not liking her anxiousness. She gave me an unimpressed look and I hurried out, picking up the old receiver as I came up to the phone’s table. 

“Grant.”

“Thomas has woken again, Peter. I think it would be prudent for you to pay a visit.” 

My stomach curled and a sheen of sweat broke out on my palms, greasing the receiver so that it slipped in my grip. That sounded bad. “What’s wrong?” I asked, voice rough. 

“He’s perfectly fine, Peter, just an abnormality requiring further investigation.”

“A medical abnormality?” I asked, conscious of Molly hovering near my shoulder, well within striking range.

“I’m not sure,” replied Dr Walid, honestly. I sighed. 

“Alright, I’ll leave now.” I hung up and turned to Molly, watching me with glistening eyes. “Dr Walid says there’s nothing to worry about,” I told her, voice full of reassurance. 

It was a pity I didn’t feel it myself.

  
***

It was busy at UCH. Supper was being served on the ward, trays being carried in and out of patient rooms. I slipped by a matronly-looking nurse laden down with a full meal on a tray and into the quiet of Nightingale’s room. It was only a bit brighter now, a corner lamp having been turned on while the overhead fluorescents remained off.

Nightingale was sitting up, formal poise completely recovered despite what was now an impressive black eye. Somehow with his looks it was hard not to imagine him coming by it by way of some dashing deed – sabres at dawn, wrestling with malfeasants, landing a malfunctioning glider – rather than the pedestrian fact of slipping on an icy puddle. 

He looked over at me when I entered, and even with his habitual self-possession back in place I could see the cracks underneath it. His eyes were a sliver too wide, his mouth set in too firm a frown. “Peter,” he said as I stepped in, and I thought I heard a trace of relief under the cold factuality. Dr Walid, standing with his back to the door to face Nightingale, turned and gave me a smile by way of greeting. 

“Sir; Doctor,” I said, coming to stand beside Dr Walid. I didn’t want to ask if something was wrong – what if Dr Walid hadn’t informed Nightingale? But that seemed hardly likely. 

“Something rather unusual has happened,” said Nightingale, his clear tone strangely gruff. “I seem – well – perhaps it’s better to show you.” He held out his hand palm-up; I could tell before he did it he was intending to cast a werelight and looked to Dr Walid. The doctor was very firm on his policy of not mixing magic and injuries. But he didn’t object, and Nightingale closed and then opened his fingers in the usual way. 

Nothing happened. 

I stared at his fingers for more than a second before looking up at him; Nightingale himself was staring at his hand, looking very grim. 

“What does this mean?” I asked, searching for words other than _What is this?_ Or _What’s happened to him?_ I didn’t feel particularly happy in my substitution. 

“It means I’ve lost my magic,” answered Nightingale, very baldly. 

“But – you said magic can only be taken at the point of death,” I said, jabbering a little. Scrabbling for a reason for this not to be real, not to be true, not to be happening. Something that didn’t mean I had just lost my mentor, and London its only properly-trained practicing wizard. Nightingale, as ever, was much more fixed of purpose. He leant his head back against the propped-up pillow, eyes staring beyond the far wall into the distance. 

“Taken, yes. But magic can be lost through injury or carelessness.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The brain is nothing but a series of circuits, Peter. If enough of them burn out, everything goes black.”

“Then you replace the fuses,” I replied heatedly. “Surely this is just temporary – the effects of the concussion.”

“That is certainly the most likely course of events,” broke in Dr Walid, before Nightingale could answer. “With complete rest, I think it most likely you will regain your former capacities.”

“That is guesswork,” dismissed Nightingale coldly, turning to look at him. 

“Either way we must make assumptions; I prefer to remain positive,” countered Dr Walid, voice quiet but firm. Nightingale held his gaze for a moment before sighing, losing some of his stiffness. 

I stood there beside Dr Walid, silent and useless. I’d never felt more helpless, not even kneeling at Nightingale’s side when he’d taken a bullet in Covent Garden. Dr Walid might help him; Nightingale might help himself. But there was absolutely nothing I could do for him. 

I thought about how I would feel if my magic suddenly dried up; I felt the pain of it like a knife up into my ribs. Then I thought about Nightingale, whose life _was_ magic, who had lived with it as a part of him for more than a hundred years, who was now the sole bastion of British Wizardry. 

It hurt too much. Like a jagged piece of metal gouging into my chest to tear out my heart messily, violently. 

“I – what can I do, sir?” I asked, trying my best to appear collected. Nightingale’s eyes flitted to me; they were slate-grey and very hard. For a moment he was silent, considering. Then:

“Nothing I think, thank you,” he pronounced, calm and cold. 

I managed a nod, turned, and left.


	2. even though the teeth are long gone there’s still bone beneath the gums

Nightingale came home the next day. I say home because the Folly unquestioningly was home – to him, first, and over the past year or so increasingly I had felt, to me. My appreciation for the Folly’s spacious dimensions, beautiful architecture and sumptuous decorations had been immediate, but it had taken a long time before the grand old house felt like home. For a long time in the period before adjusting, when I felt lost in its grandeur and elegance, I had imagined the possibility of returning to one of the police dormitories or sharing a flat somewhere not too far off. But never had I imagined Nightingale living anywhere but in the wood-paneled, marble-floored monument to wizardry. 

When I brought him home in the Jag, I naturally parked in the stables beside my current Asbo, only 6 months in my possession and already looking the worse for wear. We entered through the back door; Molly, forewarned of our coming by her preternatural senses or just as likely the roar of the Jag, was there to greet us. 

Nightingale stopped just past the doorframe, forcing me to stumble backwards to keep from slamming into him. He looked around at the empty scullery as though he’d never seen it before, then crossed the tile quietly to emerge out into the walnut-panelled corridor leading to the front of the Folly and the mosaic-floored atrium. He stood with his head cocked like a man listening for something, one hand resting against the wall to steady himself. 

“It’s gone,” he said, and for the first time there was pain in his tone. The kind of surprised anguish of a man looking for the first time on the site of his amputation. 

“What is? Sir?” I added belatedly, coming to stand beside him. His eyes were closed, brow furrowed as if in pain. Or sorrow. 

“The Folly. I can’t hear it.”

I looked around covertly. But the radiators were off, there was no whisper of flickering flames from the gas fireplace in the mundane library, no buzz from the electric lights above. The Folly was silent as ever. “I don’t hear anything,” I said, feeling a prat. 

Nightingale opened his eyes and smiled at me, sadly. “No, I don’t imagine you do. That will come in time; it will be years into your apprenticeship before you can hear the hum of the wards and spells keeping this place safe. Or rather, would be,” he finished, softly. 

“ _Would?_ ”

“Peter, you must surely realise that if I can no longer use my magic, I can’t instruct you. Learning the _formae_ without example is near to impossible, especially for one starting in only the second year of study.” With his words the stabbing sensation returned, this time tinged at the edges with ice. If Nightingale lost his magic, then by default was mine doomed as well? I had been trying not to think about it.

“It’s only been a day, sir. There’s every chance it will return.”

Nightingale straightened, tugging his jacket down into smoothness. “Peter, I might as well tell you now: if chance favoured me, yes, it might return. But I’m one of the most unlucky souls you shall ever meet; it’s best not to bet on me.”

For a moment, I was struck dumb by the apparent incongruity of his assertion. Nightingale was rich, well-educated, eternally young, handsome. He’d survived foreign service, the war, countless encounters with the uncanny. Not to mention nearly a hundred years living with Molly. 

But in that time he had lost thousands of comrades before his eyes, lost nearly all the rest over the years one by one, lost his family, his friends, any lovers he may have had. And if his youth held it would only go on – he would outlive his new acquaintances, friends, loves. Like a man suffering the death of a thousand cuts, life continued to slowly and inexorably shred him to ribbons.

“I’m not sure I can imagine my life without all this,” I said, thickly.

“You’ve not been so touched by this life as all that,” replied Nightingale in a pitying tone, and went up to his room to rest.

  
***

Nightingale was supposed to be taking it easy but he has some kind of pathological aversion to “lazing about” and so was down for what he calls supper almost before Molly had brought it in, dressed in one of his usual elegant suits complete with matching silk socks and kerchief. Even with his bruise now turning a painful-looking puce at the edges he succeeded in looking suave, the lines of the suit emphasizing the straight line of his shoulders and his svelt hips. He looked crushingly handsome, and for an audience of only one; it was almost a sin. As ever, I accepted the task of appreciating him in the absence of anyone else to do it.

“Swelling’s coming down,” I said, after a moment of dumb silence at his unexpected appearance. Only then did I note the table had been set for two – such a lack of observation would have fetched me failing marks at Hendon. 

“Yes,” he agreed. “Abdul will have me back in a few days to remove the stitches.” He sat down at the table, Molly appearing as if on queue. And that was that. No discussion of his magic, his injury, the future of the Folly. Just roast pheasant, greens, potatoes, and a thick mushroom sauce. We ate in silence.

He finished first, placing his napkin delicately beside his plate and rising while I was still chewing; an unheard-of breach in etiquette for him. But he merely nodded to me and slipped out, leaving me staring with my mouth open. 

I considered following, but he clearly didn’t want to talk. I considered calling someone, but who was there to call? And what could I report – Nightingale had left the table before all diners had finished? So I closed my mouth and finished eating instead. 

I didn’t see him again that evening.

  
***

The cold snap thawed the next day, grey clouds covering the sky while the ice melted in slow drips.

Nightingale appeared for breakfast, face pale and drawn, skin clawed from shaving. He looked as though he had slept badly, if he had slept at all. I wondered how much medication they had given him, and whether I should perhaps ask Dr Walid about upping the dosage. He shied away from the fried goods, sticking with toast and marmalade and tea. Being a generous soul I echoed his choices, steering clear of the pungent bacon and sausages. 

“I think Dr Walid was planning on looking in today,” I said, smearing jam on my toast. Nightingale glanced over, mouth frowning repressively. 

“I’m fine; I’m sure he has better uses to which to put his time. Besides, I have no shortage of tasks clamouring for my attention.”

I frowned. “What is there that can’t wait? You’re supposed to be recovering.”

Nightingale’s eyes flitted to me, then away to stare at his plate. “There is the future of the Folly to consider, Peter. Whether anyone remains who might give you at least another couple of years’ tutoring. What is to happen about –”

“Sir,” I broke in, putting down my fork. “It’s only been a day. Dr Walid is optimistic – I’m optimistic. You can’t just shut everything down because you’ve taken a hard knock.”

“The Folly supports a great number of old arrangements, Peter. They rely on a fully-trained practitioner to support them. If none is available we risk their lapsing, and in many cases the consequences would be dire. I cannot ignore what has happened; I cannot leave us in that position.”

“Then let me help – I can take on more, deal with the arrangements, do whatever –”

“Your apprenticeship is not yet sufficiently advanced for that,” cut in Nightingale, stiffly. “You must trust that I know best.”

“But you –”

“Peter,” interrupted Nightingale, sharply this time, and that was that. Discussion over. 

We finished the meal in silence.

  
***

At some point in the past 70 years when it became apparent to Nightingale that he was effectively the last wizard standing and that there was therefore unlikely to be a surprise population boom, he had converted what had once been some vein of sitting room into a study. He had brought in a large heavy desk that had probably been built sometime during the age of sail, a wing-backed leather armchair, and an axminster rug probably worth more than the entire contents of my parents’ flat excluding my dad’s record collection.

This was where he did his paperwork, on an aged blotter with a fountain pen, while I was usually engaged in learning to blow up only what I specifically intended to in the basement. 

It was here he retired to to decide “the future of the Folly,” whatever that meant. On the one hand, it seemed that I ought to have a say in it; on the other hierarchy is an integral part of any policing system; you can’t have the plebs giving orders that contradict their superiors’ or everything descends very sharply into chaos. No one likes to hear the words ‘policing’ and ‘chaos’ together; it ends badly for everyone.

So I skulked out in the hall teasing Toby until Dr Walid arrived, whereupon I showed him into the study despite Nightingale’s earlier protests. 

He had the gas fire going behind him, his chair moved closer to its warmth. In his lap he had a large leather-bound ledger, the rows of which he was slowly checking through with his Maniflex fountain pen. He looked up as the door opened, face clouding over. 

“Thomas,” greeted Dr Walid, stepping in. “You should be resting; you’ll only give yourself a headache with too much reading.” 

“Good morning to you too, Abdul,” said Nightingale wryly, closing the book and putting it down on the desk. I remained unobtrusively in the doorway, ready to leave if sent. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“How’s the head?” The doctor had brought his burgundy leather case with him, the traditional Gladstone having sadly gone the way of the Dodo some decades ago. Besides carrying his iPad and Kindle, I knew it to contain a stethoscope, well-stocked first-aid kit, epi-pen, syringes and a supply of some of the more common medications. 

“Adequate,” replied Nightingale, which probably meant it hurt like hell. Stiff upper lip hadn’t just been a saying in his day; it had been a way of life. 

“Have you been taking the Solpadol I gave you?” 

Nightingale gave him a rather mulish look, but inclined his head. 

“Good. Mind you stick to the regiment or you’ll find yourself the worse for it. Let me just do a quick check.”

I stepped out in the hall to give Nightingale his privacy, although I knew from experience with Dr Walid’s examinations it would be no more than a check of his eyes, blood pressure and vitals. Toby whined at me, circling once in a tight curve after his tail; he hadn’t been for a walk yet today. 

“We’ll go in a few minutes,” I told him; he stared up at me balefully.

I stepped back in as Dr Walid was tucking his stethoscope away, Nightingale already redoing his tie in a crisp double-Windsor. 

“You really will recover more quickly if you allow yourself to recuperate,” said Dr Walid. 

Nightingale gave him a flat, unmoved stare. It was the look of a man who had been staring down unappreciated medical advice long before the doctor had been born. Dr Walid, to his credit, didn’t back down, but he didn’t press the point either.

At my side, Toby whined again; both men glanced over at me, atmosphere in the room lightening. 

“Isn’t it time that dog was taken for a walk?” asked Nightingale, glancing at him. At the world “walk” Toby’s tail began waving, thumping heavily from side to side.

“Alright; come on, Toby, walkies.” I knew when I was beaten. I turned, Toby bounding on ahead of me as I went to fetch his lead.

When I returned 45 minutes later Dr Walid was gone and the door to Nightingale’s study was shut.

  
***

I spent the day trying to pretend everything was normal. Did some more cruising on HOLMES 2 (to no avail), went to the gym, took Toby downstairs and practiced solo indoor tennis with him to fetch the balls.

We wound up together in one of the practice labs some time later, Toby tired from his exertions and me feeling lonely and morose. Usually a good HALO campaign was enough to snap me out of it, but right now I didn’t feel like being snapped out of it.

Sometimes, you just need someone to talk to. Someone who will listen without prejudice or judgement. That person used to be Lesley, but it never would be again and most days just thinking her name hurt. Since Skygarden trust wasn’t something I was spreading around with a big knife. Instead, I had Toby, lying at my feet staring up at me in the hopes I might suddenly be struck by generosity with regards to the dog biscuits. He sighed occasionally, the kind of sound a leather sofa makes when you sit on it. It was better than nothing. 

“I just wish he’d talk to me,” I told Toby, looking down from my perch on the lab stool. “You know, open up a millimetre or two. I know he’s been cooped up along in here for decades, slowly fossilizing, but that’s changed. There’s me. And you,” I added, generously. Toby yawned. “If I thought I’d lost my magic, I’d be doing my nut by now. He’s up there dusting off old arrangements from the Georgian era.”

“The Victorian, in fact,” broke in a dry voice from the door. 

I stumbled forward off the stool, prompting Toby to scramble out of the way to avoid being trod on; he gave me an unimpressed look.

“Sir –”

“I should also hope I’m not _entirely_ fossilized yet,” Nightingale added, wry amusement in his tone. I felt heat rushing to my face.

“Of course not,” I stammered.

“Good,” he said with a little smile, putting me out of my misery. And then, more seriously, “I have something to show you.” He turned and left. I followed him out; after a quick scratch at his ear Toby did the same.

Nightingale took me down the corridor in the opposite direction from the Black Library, past the stairs to the eastern end of the building. The walls here were bare, although gleaming thanks to Molly’s unceasing campaign against rust, dust and must. Nightingale put his hand on a perfectly ordinary part of the wall and pushed; thin lines appeared in the shape of a doorway and the panel swung back.

“I think,” he said, glancing at Toby, “it would be best if the dog remained here.”

Somehow, despite the fact that Nightingale is perfectly happy to feed Toby table scraps and pet him when he gets needy, Toby is _my_ dog. It falls to me to walk him, wash him, and discipline him, as though he were some sort of childhood lesson in responsibility. 

“Sit. Stay,” I told Toby, who reluctantly lowered his haunches to the floor and sat there watching me mournfully. I followed Nightingale into the hidden room and he closed the door behind me.

Inside, the space was pitch-black. The air was stale and smelled of dust – clearly Molly hadn’t extended her campaign this far. 

“A light, if you please,” said Nightingale politely; I hurriedly conjured a werelight. By the pale, white glow I could see we were standing in a tiny room, just four by four foot. I was standing shoulder to shoulder with Nightingale; the proximity was making my skin tingle. 

Somehow, being in a dark room hardly larger than a closet with my superior was bringing back a long and sordid adolescence of games like spin the bottle. I suddenly had the urge to crawl away and hide, and I hadn’t even done anything yet.

It was that “yet” that was the problem. Standing together in such close confines was forcing me to explore all kinds of alarming thoughts about my very unprofessional feelings for Nightingale. Feelings which had remained stubbornly undoused by my ignoring them.

“Where are we?” I asked, continuing to try to ignore them.

“The Folly’s sanctum. This is the heart of the spells protecting it.” 

I thought of them as the force fields, although only in the safety of my head; Nightingale could get tetchy about perverting the language of the art. I looked around at the dark, empty room. The floor, walls and ceiling were all polished slate-grey stone, carefully pieced together to make them nearly as smooth as concrete. There was no furniture, no decorations, not even a light. “There’s nothing here,” I said, confused.

“There’s a black stone panel in the wall beside you. Put the werelight to it.”

I turned and saw what he meant; beside me at elbow height a small square piece of glinting black stone, no larger than my palm, had been set amongst the otherwise unobtrusive grey stones; it looked like flint. I pressed the werelight against it, unsure what would happen – if it would flood out over the surface, or grow, or just go out.

In fact it was absorbed into the stone like a sugar cube dropped into tea. The edges of the stone shone for a moment with the werelight’s pearly glow, and then the light spread onto the adjoining stone. A pattern of interconnected streaks and curves blossomed outwards, painting an intricate labyrinth of lines on the walls. It glowed softly, like a magical circuit board. It was strangely calming, and utterly beautiful.

“I thought you said one person can’t change the Folly’s protections,” I said, staring in amazement at the complex pattern now lighting the room. I turned to Nightingale, and in that strange twilight I saw him staring at the walls with such a look of loss on his face that it hurt. I turned away; a moment later he answered in a stiff voice, “They can’t. And in any case, you would need to be a master, or nearly, to undertake a change to the wards. For your purposes this room serves as a monitoring station.” 

“Monitoring the wards?” I asked. 

“Precisely. As long as all is white, everything is undisturbed and functioning properly. If a portion were to turn blue, it would indicate tampering. Red shows a breach.”

_White, you’re alright. Red, you’re dead,_ I recited to myself. “And then what?”

Nightingale turned to look at me somberly. “Any opponent capable of breaching the Folly’s security would be far too great a threat for you to take on. Evacuate the premises, taking any other occupants with you if possible.”

“And the Library?” I asked, remembering what Nightingale’s mind had immediately flashed to in the wake of Lesley’s betrayal.

“It has its own wards; they’re far stronger than you or I.” A tiny flicker of emotion passed over his face, but he repressed it almost instantly. “Different portions of the room indicate different wards, although they are all interconnected at some point or another, thus the unbroken lines. Teaching you the different aspects of it would take weeks, and is for the moment unnecessary; knowing how to monitor the status of the wards is sufficient for the time being.” He reached behind him and pressed once more against the door; the pressure broke the seal and the door slid inwards, revealing the bright hallway beyond. Toby whined, tail wagging against the floor. 

“Good dog,” said Nightingale absently; he stood and nosed at Nightingale’s trouser leg. “I trust you will be able to find this again, should you need to?”

I looked down the corridor, measuring the distance between the door and the stairs. “I think so,” I said. He nodded and stalked off, Toby clicking along behind him. And that was that.


	3. if I sign this piece of paper do I sell my soul along with my duties?

It’s hard to find a subtle way to ask your boss every morning whether he’s got his mojo back. Fortunately, I didn’t have to; it was obvious from Nightingale’s drawn face and shadowed eyes that it hadn’t, and that he was suffering for it. 

After that first awkward day we fell into a kind of unspoken pattern. Nightingale spent the mornings locked away in his study while I caught up on my vocab and practiced the last forma he had taught me before the accident. We broke for lunch, making awkward small talk that failed entirely to discuss Nightingale’s loss or the Folly’s future. Then in the afternoon I did whatever police-work needed doing, took Toby for a walk, and hit the gym. Nightingale spent the time reading, tucked away in the Magical Library, and for all he said nothing about it I was sure he was looking a way to fix whatever had happened to him. That he always emerged looking exactly the same was enough to show he hadn’t. 

But then, he hadn’t known how to fix Lesley, either. I had long ago formed the opinion that magic, like long-range artillery or Tony Blair, was much better at breaking things than putting them back together. 

This thought led to an interesting although highly irrelevant digression considering what Nightingale’s actual legal status was. Whether – and how – he had appropriate identification, and if he could do things most of us took for granted, like vote, go abroad, or buy beer from the off license. It was all well and good to say he was a British citizen with legal standing, but anyone checking the driver’s license of someone with a birthdate in 1900 and the face of a forty year-old was bound to be suspicious. 

But Nightingale wasn’t about to hop the pond anytime soon, and he had me to procure his cheap beer for him, and Molly to lay in a stock of brandy and port on the Folly’s account with Berry Bros & Rudd. So, as I say, moot point.

  
***

On the fourth day since Nightingale checked out of UCH he came down to breakfast in a black suit with a pale lavender stripe and an amethyst tie that brought out the grey of his eyes, and announced, “I believe we need to talk, Peter.”

“Um,” I said, eloquently. I had been dreading this, the moment where Nightingale tried to pull the Folly down around him. He poured himself a cup of black coffee and took a seat, leaving the platters of Molly’s fragrant offerings alone. I couldn’t very well tuck into black pudding and sausages following that announcement, so I did the same, taking the seat beside him. Toby, if you’re interested, remained hopefully by the sideboard as though perhaps he could encourage a sausage to roll off its tray by sheer willpower. 

“I’ve completed my survey of the agreements. All will cease to hold true if there is no resident wizard at the Folly; in most cases, this is not a problem. The agreement was drawn up to dictate our behaviour in some way relating to the interests of another party. If there is no Folly, there is no issue. A handful are more difficult – the Folly was playing an active role in maintaining order or settling disputes, and without us it is difficult to know who would take over that responsibility.”

“You’re still assuming there’s no us,” I pointed out a little indistinctly, tongue scalded by the coffee. “Surely there’s been times in the past when you’ve been off active duty – ill, or on holiday, or…” I trailed off, seeing the look Nightingale was giving me. It wasn’t withering, or repressive, or disgusted. It was just tired. He was tired of this conversation, tired of me protesting against what he had already decided. 

I shut up, despite the fact that I was equally tired of his unwillingness to listen. A DCI’s exhaustion outranks a PC’s. 

“So what?” I asked, instead. “You’re just going to board up the Folly and walk away?”

A flicker of pain passed over Nightingale’s face; he took a long sip of his coffee as though to drown out a bad taste in his mouth. “That is an option,” he admitted, “but not the one I prefer. For now, we can limp along with me in an advisory capacity and you as my eyes and ears. I would like to pursue the option of bringing tutors in to teach you your forma; I could supervise your practice, of course, but you will need someone to demonstrate. If you work at it, you might make it up to the seventh or eighth year; I doubt any of the old mob has ninth or tenth order spells left in them.” He sighed. “That would be sufficient for you to carry on the work of the Folly, perhaps in a reduced capacity. We could also investigate sending you abroad to study in your final years; the American colleges might be persuaded to bend the arrangement.”

The worst part of it was, he was serious. He was sitting here drinking coffee planning my life out eight years down the road, a path pock-marked with ancient geezers and trips abroad. It was enough to give a man palpitations. 

“I didn’t join the Folly to be Britain’s sole wizard, sir,” I said. He put his cup down and turned, very slowly, to look at me.

“Then perhaps you ought to have thought your choice through more coherently. You knew you were joining a department of one; what did you anticipate happening in the event of my… departure?”

“I thought…” I began, slowly. _I thought some other branch of the Met would scoop me up to keep me from making a mess when I hit the pavement,_ was the true answer.

“You thought you would just leave, start something else,” said Nightingale, with irritating insight. “But Peter, you –”

“Took an oath, I know,” I broke in. Nightingale frowned. “But it was you I swore it to, wasn’t it, sir? I’m _your_ apprentice, not the Folly’s, not the Met’s, not England’s. Without you, what am I?”

Nightingale sat staring at me rather dumbly for a moment, before softening. “I am not proposing to disappear.”

“No, just to farm me around to your old network, send me abroad – I’m not some Victorian schoolboy to be passed around different masters with the hopes I’ll pick something up, sir. I’m a copper, I’ve a job to do here.” _With you_ , I badly wanted to say, but knew he wouldn’t wear it. 

Nightingale twitched, irritation sketching lines on his forehead. “Then what would you have me do? Make you, an apprentice of two years, sole undisputed commander of the Folly? Even if I were irresponsible enough to do so, the Commissioner would never permit such a flight of folly.” If I had been feeling less mutinous, I would have smiled at the pun. 

“I want things to stay as they are, sir. For now – it’s still not been a week, and I have plenty to master with what’s already on my plate. I don’t need tutors, not for a while.” 

Nightingale turned his cup with a precise gesture so the handle was pointed at nine o’clock. “Nothing need happen immediately,” he agreed gently, as though trying to appease a scared child. “I can agree to that. But in the fullness of time…”

“We’ll deal with it when it comes up, I know.”

Nightingale shrugged in capitulation. “Very well. But when that time comes options will be few and far between. I will cease to be your master; you must accept that.”

And that, really, was the crux. 

I didn’t want to.

  
***

You might say, what did it really matter? Clearly Nightingale was more deeply ensconced in the Folly than my mother in a shoe shop, and even closing time wasn’t enough to expel her. Even if he ceased to be my superior – master was just never going to be in my vocabulary – he would still be around.

But would he? That was the question that had begun keeping me awake at night. What if he _did_ decide to chuck it all? Take an early – or late – retirement and… I don’t know. See the modern world. Buy a house in the country. Start a second career as a male model. Hell, the options were endless. And why shouldn’t he? He had been in Her Majesty’s service longer than the average national life expectancy – since back in that foggy time long past when it had been His Majesty’s service, in fact. Why shouldn’t he be granted a reprieve, a chance to get out of these halls full of memories and ghosts?

Against all of that, what counter-point could I possibly offer?

You see my problem.

  
***

For the past few days, what with Nightingale in hospital and then trying to desert ship, I had more or less chosen to ignore the chimera we had seen together on the streets of Bayswater. We had run into her initially on a tip-off with long odds, and had nothing to follow up on now that she’d scarpered. HOLMES was a bust, shooting the shit over at my old nick was a bust, and mentioning it to Seawoll just earned me the eye.

It wasn’t like we forgot, is what I’m trying to say. You don’t just forget an ethically challenged magician running around your city splicing people and jungle creatures together, and turning your friend to the dark side. You just put it on the back burner for a while as other priorities come to the fore. Like keeping your guv’nor from moping to death.

  
***

Nightingale doesn’t actually mope. He did brood a bit, sitting on his own in the study in the long cold evenings, watching the window frost over. Mostly though he watched rugby and read dog-eared editions of Churchill’s _The Second World War_ and marked my Latin vocab with a vicious red pen. He took Toby out for a walk once; the two of them returned looking worn and slightly shell-shocked.

I caught him once in the coach house looking through the old paintings stored there; I had tripped up the stairs with unusual lightness and he didn’t hear me until I’d opened the door. He was standing with his narrow back to me, the back of his head sleek and well-groomed; he was looking at one of the portraits. 

He didn’t quite drop the stack of wood and canvas when I barged in, but it was a near thing. A hint of pink washed over his angular cheekbones; I stared. Nightingale could be flustered by the vagaries of the modern age – keyless cars, sexting, Candy Crush Saga – but I’d never seen him really embarrassed before. 

“Pardon the intrusion, Peter, I was just…”

“They’re yours, aren’t they?” I asked, letting him off before he was forced to either make up a poor excuse or tell the truth. “They feel like you.” This was a lie; they felt as Nightingale might have in the days of his long-forgotten youth, laughter and precision and the scent of brandy and sandalwood. It could have been someone else’s _vestigia_. But somehow I was sure it wasn’t.

Nightingale nodded slowly, and I padded over to see what he was looking at. It was the portrait of the young, intense-looking man, his blue eyes staring up at us intently. “That’s not you, is it?” It looked a bit like him, in the way all young white upper-class men resemble each other – especially did back in the 1920s. But if there was meant to be more of a resemblance, it had been lost in the impressionist brush strokes. 

“No,” he said slowly, putting it down on the floor. “That was a man called Mellenby.”

I blinked. “David Mellenby?” 

Nightingale turned to look at me, head swivelling as smooth as if it had been on greased ball bearings. 

“You mentioned him one. So did Hugh Oswald,” I said, faltering a little under his suddenly 1,000 watt stare. “Said he was an empiricist.” Not the words Hugh had used, but the ones he had meant. “Said you gave up your place on the glider back for him. Is that true?” I don’t know why I said it, it wasn’t as though I thought Hugh was lying. But Nightingale nodded silently, eyes sharp as knives. 

“How did you get back, then?”

“I walked,” said Nightingale plainly. I almost smiled, before I realised he wasn’t joking. 

“Oh.” Peter Grant, ladies and gentlemen, captain of eloquence. And then, in a continuing vein of dumb questions, “Why did you give up your seat?”

Nightingale blinked slowly. “Because he needed it,” he said, tone hard but brittle. “And because I wanted him to get back safely.” 

Oh. Oh. The dusty portrait, Nightingale’s previous near-silence on the topic of Mellenby – enough like me that I would have thought he might have come up occasionally – it made sense. At least, it did if you took it all to mean that Nightingale and he were more than just friends. 

And yet Nightingale had eventually made it home only to find Mellenby had killed himself. I swallowed. Nightingale’s eyes were shuttered, his mouth very flat.

“I suppose Oswald told you –”

“He didn’t. Make it,” I said, softly, the words tumbling out. “Hugh said. I’m sorry.”

Nightingale finally turned away, stacking the rest of the paintings he was holding in his arms back on top of the portrait of Mellenby. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “A lifetime ago.”

“That doesn’t mean it stops hurting.”

Nightingale straightened, dusting his hands against each other. “No. But perhaps one can look to other things.”

My mouth went dry. What other things? Had he noticed me – god, had I been making sheep’s eyes at him? Or, even worse, did he have someone else in mind? Or was he talking about something else together, and the rampant paranoia I had lived with since Lesley’s betrayal was just proving itself still present? 

_Breathe_ , I told myself. _It’s not all about you._

Nightingale looked over his shoulder, caught my eye, and gave me an aching smile. If he had asked me for anything at that moment, I would have given it to him – he didn’t need a glamour. He was naturally devastating. 

“Thank you, Peter,” he said, clasping my shoulder, and then walked past me to disappear out the coach house door and into the cold darkness beyond. The door clicked shut behind him, and I was left alone in the tech cave.

  
***

It was much later that evening that I finished expunging a few Covenant strongholds. I shut down the X-Box, powered down the rest of the electronics, and flipped off the lights behind me as I left the coach house. It was perfectly possible to spend the night on the sofa there – you just wished you hadn’t the next morning.

I re-entered the Folly through the back door, but had to cut through to the front of the building to take the stairs up to my room. As I came out of the corridor I saw a shadowed figure standing in the darkness of the Atrium in front of the statue of Sir Isaac Newton. 

The sense-making part of my brain – the part that turns noise into words and patterns of light and shadow into recognizable shapes – told me it must be Molly. But Molly owed no dues to Sir Isaac – I’d never seen her look twice at the statue. And besides, Molly didn’t have square shoulders and a trim waist, nor did she wear absurdly expensive trouser suits. 

I stopped in the entrance to the atrium and stood, watching Nightingale watching the statue. He stood in silence for nearly a minute. And then, in a low gruff voice, he spoke. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps there ought to be more to life than this mausoleum. Perhaps duty need not be forever.” 

He looked over at me, and I realised it was me he was speaking to, not the statue. He’d known I was here all along. I stepped out. 

“I can see why you would hesitate to give yourself to this life, Peter. It rarely rewards faithfulness.” 

“Coppering doesn’t either, sir, but that’s what I signed up for, to start with at least.”

“I don’t suppose I ever truly signed up for anything,” mused Nightingale, looking back to the statue. “One didn’t, in those days. I was a younger son, it was expected I would be raised with a career in mind. Wizarding came naturally to my family, and that was that.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, as if it wasn’t what had defined his life – still defined it. My self-interest warred with sympathy; sympathy won out.

“Times have changed; we aren’t born into our futures anymore, sir. You could get out. Do something else. Anything else,” I offered, a little stiffly – it was hard, making myself say the words. Making myself propose the thing I spent my nights dreading. Nightingale’s lips twitched upwards into a half-smile. 

Nightingale stood, still and silent, apparently considering my words. Then, to my surprise, he turned and perched on the edge of the pedestal supporting old Sir Isaac. He sat leaning forward, elbows on his knees. It occurred to me that I’d been underestimating the physical toll all this must have been taking on him – sitting there with his back curved like a cat’s, he looked _exhausted._ I stepped over and sat down beside him; he didn’t look up.

“I don’t know anything beyond this life,” he admitted softly.

“You could learn,” I said. Somehow though, sitting beside him in the blue-grey shadows, the world felt old, tired. Closed off to new things, bright endeavours. 

Nightingale closed his eyes, sighing. “I’m not sure I want to.” 

We sat, shoulder to shoulder in the dark hush of the atrium. Slowly I realised the warm press of his weight against mine was increasing. He was slumping over against me, drifting into sleep. I suddenly became aware of every itch, every tickle, every twitch struggling to get out; I suppressed them forcibly.

In sleep, Nightingale’s aquiline features softened, eyes losing their sharpness and the firm line of his mouth relaxing. Moonlight pouring in through the transom window above the door painted cool curves of light over his forehead and cheeks, narrowing to knife-points over his jaw. 

I wanted him badly.

If life were a romance novel, I would have carried him up to bed and tucked him in, and he would have woken in the morning and known I’d been there. It’s not, though, so when my neck started cramping up I shook him awake and walked him up the stairs, leaving him at his doorstep. Then I crawled into my own bed and tried to go to sleep. It was a long time coming.


	4. they told us not to clap, but we clap as loud as we can

Despite being a walking anachronism, when it comes to formality Nightingale really expects very little from others – I suppose after the 60s and 70s there was probably nothing left that could shock him. He doesn’t, for instance, require us to dress for dinner or retire to the lounge for brandy and cigars, for which I am appropriately grateful.

A bit shockingly though, as the days passed he began to loosen up further. He took to wearing old blazers, stopping to lean against the kitchen counter and chat with Molly, going down to bat balls for Toby in the tennis court with an antique wooden-framed racket in his shirtsleeves with the cuffs rolled neatly up. 

I may have stayed to watch this last.

What surprised me most, though, was coming across him in the morning room curled in the big bay window’s bunk seat. His sketchpad was balanced on his lap and he was staring intently out at the square beyond while his pencil scratched delicate lines on the paper. He was wearing a sky-blue cashmere pullover and grey flannel trousers, a thin tartan blanket wrapped about his shoulders against the cold leeching in from outside. His long, clever fingers moved the pencil with the same clean precision as he wove _formae_ , his eyes shining in the morning sun. For a minute I could imagine him as a young man – really young – full of fire and life. Over the past seventy years he’d buried himself here; retreated into the Folly and shut himself away from the world outside. Even when he ventured out he maintained his distance – careful, polite, distant.

“Did you need something, Peter?” he asked suddenly, without looking up from his pad. I swallowed, feeling a sweat breaking out on the back of my neck. Somehow, it didn’t seem possible to sneak up on the man.

“I’ve some reports – last week’s run in with the Black Dog.” I stepped over and he unfolded himself, feet dropping to rest on the well-beaten rug. He’d been drawing sparrows, I saw as he put down the paper, rotund little forms brimming with energy and curiosity. 

I handed him my papers and he glanced through them before initialing as required with the pen I provided. “They’re very good,” I said, looking at the sketches. Nightingale shrugged, a smile pulling at his lips. 

“It’s not something I’ve had time for in the past. Perhaps now…” he shrugged, a little self-consciously. “Perhaps I needn’t lose everything.” 

“No,” I said, mouth suddenly feeling like it was full of marbles. And then, no less awkwardly, “You’re more than your magic, sir.” 

Nightingale swept his eyes over me, and I felt myself beginning to sweat again. “It’s been a long time since anyone thought so,” he said at last. “Thank you.”

Feeling like my shirt was going to start sticking to my back soon, I stammered a vague reply and hurried away with my forms rapidly crumpling in my grip.

  
***

I had a bath that night, filling the old claw-footed relic in the huge lav and soaking until I started to go pruney. I went to bed still warm from the water, curling up under the down duvet and watching the flames of the gas fireplace flicker. Whoever had replaced the old coal fireplace with gas had done it properly, putting in a convection system to fan the heat out into the room. I knew I’d wake up somewhere around two sweating like a pig, which is why I went to bed in nothing but my briefs.

I was woken in the middle of the night not by the heat but a thump, a yelp, and a fierce cursing. I tumbled out of bed, suddenly terrified Nightingale had had some kind of dizzy fit and gone down the staircase. I switched on the light and ripped the door open.

Thomas ‘Tiger Tank’ Nightingale was sitting on his arse on the floor in an ancient quilted smoking jacket and slippers, glaring down the corridor. He looked up as I came out, and his glare washed away to be replaced by a glassy look as his eyes ran over the bare planes of my chest and arms. I spend enough time in the gym to keep my pride in my build, not that the relative darkness of the corridor was doing it much justice.

I heroically avoided preening. “Are you alright, sir?”

Nightingale blinked, snapping out of it. “Tripped over the damn dog,” he said. Which explained the yelp. Toby tends to spend the winter months sleeping outside my door; I can’t imagine why when he has the run of the kitchen, which is always warm. Then Nightingale frowned. “He’s not hurt?”

I stepped out into the hall and looked down its length; in the shadows at the far end Toby was crouched guiltily, unusually silent. “Come here. _Come_ , Toby.”

Apparently knowing what was good for him he came, tail between his legs. He sidled up to me, whining a little as I knelt to check him; he didn’t shy away or voice any complaints as I checked him over though, and I turned to tell Nightingale he was fine.

Which was when I caught my boss checking out my arse. 

Nightingale flushed a surprisingly bright red before passing a hand through his hair and pulling himself up. “Yes. Well. I was on my way to the kitchen for a glass of water. Goodnight.” He continued on before I could answer, walking a little stiffly, one hand raised in front of him.

To hold a werelight, I realised with a pang. 

I contemplated leaving him his dignity, but I would rather an embarrassed boss than one lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck; I moved along the hall until I came to the light and switched it on.

“I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” I told Toby as I returned and turned him out of my room. He gave a little yip and turned a few times in a tight circle before sitting down, nose pressed to tail. 

I closed the door and went back to bed.

If I had known that the next day all hell was going to break loose, I would have spent less time happily reflecting on the hint of awe in Nightingale’s face as he took in my nearly-naked form and more time sleeping.

  
***

We breakfasted almost as usual, the two of us valiantly pretending nothing had happened last night. Nightingale offered to pour me coffee; I let him. Then I went to the reading room to get started on my work and he buggered off somewhere – the only thing I was pretty sure of is that it wasn’t to play with Toby.

I spent the rest of the morning as usual working on my vocab and firing up good old Google translate to help me work through some more of the _Principia_ , or at least to let it share in my confusion. I put in some practice on my _forma_ , but it was slippery work and I couldn’t help but feel I’d started to skid away from the desired outcome. Without Nightingale to demonstrate or provide insight, I had no choice but to keep going and hope I found the key again. 

By lunchtime we had both regained our composure. Nightingale showed up with ink on his fingers – either he had been compiling information in the library, or his sketches had progressed to inking. I briefly considered telling him about Photoshop, but nixed the idea almost immediately. Nightingale uses technology in a practical, targeted approach, employing it for its main specific purpose and sticking to whatever non-digital means exist for everything else. I couldn’t imagine him approving of digital artwork. 

After lunch I went down to the firing range. I’d been neglecting it of late, and spent nearly an hour blasting away at the paper targets; by the time I was done I had successfully reduced most of them to cinders. 

I was just finishing up with a skinny grenade when I felt… something. It was a little like _vestigia_ in that it was clearly uncanny, but it wasn’t an impression of a touch, taste or sound. It was like a hook in my naval tugging at me, dully at first, then sharply. I hurried out of the firing range to find Nightingale – in a practice where getting it wrong gives you a brain aneurism, you don’t take chances – but for some reason instead of heading up the stairs I stood staring down the basement hallway. I could feel the tug coming from the far end. 

Frowning, I bypassed the stairs and counted my steps as I headed along, coming up to the part of the wall Nightingale had shown me before. It took me a couple of tries to find the right bit, and then it swung back as obligingly as it had for him.

I stepped into the black room, pushed it shut behind me, and muttered _lux_ while unfolding my hand. The little white ball hovered faithfully, illuminating dark stone. I pushed it to the black panel to my right and watched the lines run outwards from it. The first wall was white. So was most of the second. Then, as the little white roads ran along towards the corner they began filling with blue, a startling topaz. And then, down in the corner, they bled into scarlet – bright, poppy red. 

For a moment I stood staring at it, a wave of fear crashing through me. Someone was here, now, in the Folly. Maybe more than one. Maybe the Faceless Man. 

Maybe Lesley. 

And out there was Nightingale, without magic to fight them. 

I slammed my fist against the door and it slid open; I ran out, stopping only at the stairwell with a belated spree of caution. Hand raised and ready I crept up the stairs – Molly would be in the kitchen, surely, easy to warn. And Nightingale?

At the top of the stairs I inched the door open, heart in my mouth waiting for a creak. But it swung open silently, a testament to Molly’s relentless campaign. 

There was no one in the back hall, in fact at the front of the building. I padded silently along the wooden floor, back to the wall, until I reached the open space of the atrium. I had to cross it to reach the kitchen, and most anywhere Nightingale would be. Times like this, I _really_ wished he could be relied upon to keep his mobile with him. 

I looked out across the open room, peering up into the shadows above – the iron-railed balcony that ran between the two staircases. I couldn’t see anything; the staircases themselves were certainly empty. 

I took a breath and stepped out, hurrying across the tiled mosaic floor.

I almost made it. Almost, almost, _almost_ made it. But then, almost doesn’t count.

A huge weight dropped down on me silently from above, tearing into my shoulder as it caught me and threw me down with it. I rolled away towards the nearest wall, shoulder burning, and caught sight of a dark form in a hoody and jeans before something green and scaly whipped around to slam into my jaw, knocking me back in a shower of stars. 

I tried to use _impello_ but missed; the next thing I knew a green face with huge bug-eyes was staring down at me as rough, dry hands closing around my neck. I tried to yell – to warn Nightingale and Molly, call for help, do _something_ – but the air was being choked cleanly from my throat and there was just a quiet bubbling noise. My sight was going, hearing full of a thrumming sound that I realised vaguely was my desperate heartbeat. I kicked futilely, brain hurriedly draining of any spells I knew, any combat moves, anything but the primal need to fight, to stay alive. I punched at the ugly face; he ducked the blow. 

That’s when Nightingale shot the fucker. 

I heard the gun’s retort from what seemed like very far away; a moment later the weight disappeared off my chest and Nightingale was looming over me, an old army revolver in his hand. Smith & Wesson Victory model I learned later – a true relic. 

“Peter?” he demanded, sounding frantic as he knelt down, pulling at my shirt to show my neck. He sighed, a little of the tension loosening from his shoulders. “Thank God, I –”

Something long and green struck him in the side of the head, the end whipping around to cut his far cheek. He went rolling away, sliding to a sickening stop on the tiles and laying still. 

“ _NO!_ ” I was pulling to my feet before I really understood what had happened, head spinning as I tried to focus, tried to find the threat, the bastard who had hit him. 

Across the room, a tall thin young woman – the same we had chased in Bayswater, I thought – was standing near the statue of Sir Isaac, a long green tail protruding from her trousers. She tensed to move when she saw me raise my hand. 

I think she probably would have avoided the skinny grenade. But Molly moves faster than me. She darted out from the shadows of the kitchen corridor, moving silently on the tile, and fastened an arm on the woman’s shoulder. A moment later there was an audible rending as her teeth buried themselves in the hollow between neck and shoulder. 

They sank to the ground together, Molly’s grip tight as death. 

“Don’t kill her,” I told Molly, a sudden wave of giddiness rushing over me as the adrenaline and the probable concussion intermingled. Molly gave me a highly unimpressed look; but then, I’d long since realised the Folly had no visible history of taking enemies alive. 

Witness the man lying at my feet with four bullets in his back, hood slipped back to reveal a chameleon’s dead, staring eyes. 

Being a highly trained policeman, I managed to work my phone out of my pocket and call Stephanopoulis rather than fainting, at that point the preferred option. “We’ve had some seriously weird bollocks go down here,” I told her, staring at the two lizard people lying on the floor. 

She moaned about procedures and back-up, but I was starting to feel sick from the smell of the blood and gunpowder. “Nightingale’s down,” I told her, which put a stop to the ranting. My voice sounded a bit faint even in my own ears.

“Are you alright? Peter?”

My shoulder was really burning now. I looked down at it and saw that a good portion of my shirt was soaked a wet, glinting red. “I think I need to sit down,” I told her, before slumping gracelessly beside Nightingale. The phone clattered away; I could hear her distant voice squawking. 

Giddiness gave way to a cold shivering, and I let the world begin to slip away as shock poured its icy streams into my veins.


	5. we follow our own steps while our shadows keep watching us

Some people wake up in hospital to find hovering over them the face of an angelic nurse, or their dear loved ones or good mates.

I woke up to Detective Chief Inspector Seawoll.

“Well Grant,” he said, seeing that I was awake, “Here we are again.”

I didn’t point out we that we hadn’t actually been in this precise position before; I still had tender feelings for my eardrums. “How’s Nightingale?” I asked instead. The image of him lying still on the floor of the Folly was vivid in my mind, burning like phosphorus. My hands curled into fists; I noticed that the tips of my nails burrowing into my palms didn’t hurt like it should have, and wondered exactly what they’d shot me up with. The world wasn’t exactly fuzzy, but I did feel a bit further away from things – a sense of being two steps away from what was happening. In a way, things almost seemed clearer for it. And the one thing I knew I needed was for Nightingale to be alright.

“He’s fine,” said Seawoll dismissively. 

“Fine how. Sir?” I asked, before he could bury the question under others such as: How much shit exactly are you able to sow, son; or Lizard-people, really? or the ever-popular: I’m beginning to wonder how much you value your career. None of that mattered. Not when it still felt like I could smell the gunpowder, see Nightingale standing above me for just an instant before being knocked down with a strike that looked strong enough to snap his spine. 

Seawoll’s face twitched, but it takes a right bastard to lie to a young copper about his guv’nor, and as much as Seawoll’s approach to compassion was modelled on a wrecking ball, he wasn’t heartless. “He’s in surgery. Bleeding on the brain. They’re putting in a drain.”

So pretty much the opposite of fine. My heart constricted and as I tried to sit up I felt my heartrate hammering through my temples. Both my head and shoulder protested, the shoulder the louder of the two. But no alarms went off and no one crowded in to take notice. I realised I was in Casualty, the background conversations and moaning considerably louder than on an inpatient ward.

“I need some questions answered before you scarper, Grant,” said Seawoll, looming. He had the frame for it – mountains would tremble before him. I set my jaw, ready to protest; he rolled right on regardless.

“First, who exactly is it Walid has down in his jolly fucking buffet parlour?”

I didn’t want to talk about this. I wanted to talk about Nightingale, specifically the part where I was promised in more solid terms that he was going to recover. But you ignore senior officers at your own risk – in Seawoll’s case, risk to your continued existence. “Not sure, sir. They’re… hostiles. They broke into the Folly and attacked me.”

“Names, priors, backgrounds?” demanded Seawoll.

“None. We’d only seen one of them before today.”

“So they just decided to take a fucking jaunt into your creephouse, did they?”

I paused. “Are we on the record here, sir?” A vendetta with a faceless man and his half-human sidekicks is for afterschool telly, not police reports.

“Yes, we bloody well are,” growled Seawoll.

“A… known suspect in several previous cases has been building a network of associates with … special talents. He sees us as a threat.” It wasn’t ironclad but it was the best I could do with Seawoll looming, the drugs making me feel like someone had unplugged reality, and worry for Nightingale funnelling away my focus.

“People with scales, you mean?” said Seawoll, dryly.

“People with specialised health circumstances who might not get the care they require elsewhere,” I bullshitted. It is sometimes a comfort to know that my tongue at least runs even without 100% guidance from my better reason.

“He’s a doctor, is he, your suspect?” Seawoll’s voice dripped with irony. 

I thought of the Strip Club of Dr Moreau. “Interested in biochemistry,” I said at last, in the same tone. “And in young people without friends or families,” I added for good measure. Seawoll’s face took on a look of disgust; he had no trouble reading between the lines. Magical mutants.

“One of them was missing a considerable portion of its neck. A piece approximately the size of fucking Wales. How did that happen?”

He’d left the hard questions for the end, I notice. It was one consolation. “They had a dog with them,” I fabricated, remembering the agony of Molly’s teeth in my own neck. “A really goddamn big one, sir, practically a wolf. Nearly took a chunk out of Toby – our mutt,” I expanded seeing Seawoll’s confusion.

“And it just did a runner, did it?”

“It must have, if you didn’t catch it. I was slightly incapacitated at the time,” I said, playing the wounded hero card. Seawoll looked unimpressed.

“And how did that happen then?”

My good hand drifted unconsciously to my injured arm and I probed it gently; it ached. “The cha – the bigger one – got the drop on me. He knocked me down and tried to strangle me.”

“And?”

I frowned. “And Nightingale shot him.” The image was still clear as cut crystal in my mind, Nightingale standing with the smoking revolver in his hand, face steely with focused rage. And then the fear – fear for me, fear I’d never seen in him before. And then the blow. 

“Did he caution him?” asked Seawoll, watching me closely. 

One thing I was absolutely sure about was that the Folly was the one corner of Britain left with positively no CCTV coverage. Even if there had been, I’m not sure it would have changed my answer. I stared Seawoll right back in the eye. “Absolutely. My life was in immediate danger,” I added in case that hadn’t been clear. And then, a little defensively, “He has the paperwork.”

He did, in fact. I’d done it when he decided to keep some of the antique weaponry we found in the basement. Those pieces the bomb squad didn’t have to be called in to deal with. 

“Of course he does,” said Seawoll, sounding just a little disappointed. 

“Is that all, sir? Because I –” I started to get out of the bed and stopped when Seawoll stepped forward, like an active volcano practicing a pre-eruption warning. 

“No it’s damn well not all, Grant. That nick of yours is supposed to be sodding impregnable – that’s the only reason your outfit has survived on its own with only one man running the place.”

“Two,” I said softly; Seawoll glared.

“If your security is compromised, that’ll be the end of that marble-coated, oak-paneled eyesore.”

I had a brief image of Nightingale and I sharing an office in one of the local nicks – ragged carpet, cracking plaster, the two of us cheek to jowl in the cramped space with Styrofoam coffee cups on our desks and Molly in the corner glowering at passers-by like an awful warning.

Definitely not happening.

“It hasn’t been, sir. Nightingale will vouch for that. When he wakes up,” I said, pointedly. I needed to see him. The urgency of that need was starting to make my skin creep, make me itch and ache and tremble. I’d never felt so worried for anyone – it was simultaneously strange and awful. 

Seawoll glared, but as much as he didn’t like the answer it was one he was going to have to accept. For now, at least. He motioned me out of the bed, and I rose.

With Seawoll as my escort I made it out of Casualty in record time, wearing a set of scrubs – another outfit gone to be added the growing collection in the evidence lock-up.

Surgery was on another floor; we rode the elevator in uncompanionable silence. Seawoll’s never had much of an opinion of me, and what little he had evaporated entirely after the Lesley debacle. 

“You’ll give a formal statement in a few hours,” he said; _after the drugs’ve worn off_ , is what I heard. “I’ll send a DC around to fetch you.”

And then he left me alone in the waiting room. I wasn’t too put out, if I’m honest.

In fact I wasn’t alone in the waiting room; sprinkled in with me was a small gathering of strangers waiting for family or friends. I took a seat in a synthetic-fabric-covered seat and looked around at the waiting area. It was just a nook carved into a wide hallway, one of several small seating areas dotting the hall. There were a few bulletin boards with health warning sheets like KNOW THE SIGNS OF STROKE, and HAVE YOU WASHED YOUR HANDS? Standard hospital fare. My neighbours were an elderly white couple dressed as though Elvis were still crooning Blue Suede Shoes, a young Asian woman calmly swiping through an iPad’s screen while her son played with wind-up cars on the lino floor, and what was clearly a middle-aged banker who kept glancing at his watch. Whether he was nervous for his relative or his abandoned investments was impossible to say.

I don’t know how long I was there. Time gets a little hazy when you’ve got a head wound and your bloodstream’s full of painkillers. Eventually, after about my 10th mental run-through of the upcoming interview, a young nurse came out looking for Nightingale’s family. She was black with wide-set eyes and a slow, sweet smile that she turned on me when I stood.

“He did well in surgery,” she said, leading me to an empty corner of the waiting area. “He’s stable; he’ll be out until tomorrow at least.” 

I let out a breath I hadn’t noticed I’d been holding. “Can I see him? Please?” 

“Once we’ve got him settled. He’ll be on the 3rd floor, south ward.” She left me alone there, wondering if they’d turn me away if I showed up before Nightingale.

I didn’t have the chance to find out – that was when the DC turned up.

  
***

I spent a few hours at the Charing Cross nick, giving my official statement to Seawoll, Stephanopoulis and a sea of recording technology. This was followed by an informal interrogation, which in a way was more exhausting.

By the end of it I was ready to drop, but my chest was still tight with concern – I’d yet to see Nightingale, or to receive Walid’s opinion of his condition. So I schlepped back to the Folly to change clothes before returning. 

I expected to find Molly waiting for me in the foyer, piano-wire taut with worry. What I found was a scattered mix of police tape, markers, and fingerprint dust. No Molly and, possibly more worrying, no Toby.

I tried the kitchen first, then the scullery, then – apprehensively – Nightingale’s room. They were all empty. So was everywhere else I looked, until finally I heard a quiet yipping from the depths of the building. I descended the curved staircase from the upper floors and then the narrow dimly-lit back stairs.

“Toby?” I called, stepping down off the last step onto the concrete floor. It occurred to me in the silent must of the basement that I wasn’t entirely sure I _wanted_ to find Molly. The last time I’d seen her post-blood-lust she’d almost eaten me. It seemed like a situation that might require more protection than the zip-lock baggie with my personal affects offered. 

In the distance Toby yapped again, the high-pitched bark echoing slightly in the empty corridors. It was coming from the firing range.

I padded quietly down the hall, leaving my phone, wallet and keys behind. The lights were off in the firing range. I flicked them on as I stepped sharply in, my right hand raised to deal with a range of situations.

What I found was Molly, sitting at the end of the range just in front of the targets, her back to the wall and her knees drawn up to her chest. There was no trace of blood on her – clearly she had cleaned up. She didn’t look up as I approached. Just stayed, curled up in the silence, one more shadow among many. I walked up cautiously; she was faster than me and much more dangerous. 

“Molly?” I asked; she didn’t move. “He’s going to be fine. He’s in hospital – just another lump.”

That, and a hole in his skull. I swallowed. Down at ankle height, Toby sidled over and sat, looking mournfully up at me. “You’re not both going to sulk, are you? There’s only three of us left standing right now; I can’t do everything.”

Molly looked up slowly. She looked apprehensive, almost afraid.

“He’s going to be fine,” I promised, and hoped to God I wasn’t lying. “And so are you – there’s nothing to worry about, I’ve put the fix in.” Me and the werewolf of London. Molly didn’t get up, but her eyes did brighten a little. “Look, I’ve got to get back to him. Don’t stay down here all night, right?”

Molly slowly inclined her head, a curtain of dark hair sweeping down over her shoulder. Her red lips turned upwards into a hint of a smile. “I’ll be back late,” I said, a shiver running down my spine at the smile, and scurried off to change my clothes. Behind me, I could hear Toby yapping, doubtless begging for a pat, or maybe sausage. Molly could take care of that.

Upstairs I threw on some new clothes, ran some water over my face, and then it was out the door and off to UCH.

  
***

It was late when I got back. Hospitals never stop, but they do slow down. The evening lull had settled in – after feeding, before night meds. At least, they were slow until I got into the elevator and the overhead paging system pinged. “Major haemorrhage team, room 303. Major haemorrhage team, room 303.”

My heart dropped through the floor. Nightingale was on the third floor, and he presumably had a goddamn hole in his head. If the bleeding on his brain had come back, if some artery had been nicked… A damp chill settled into my bones, leaving me cold and weak, like I was the one bleeding out. Worry poured icy water into my veins, leaving me to drown. 

The elevator opened just as a team of nurses came flying down the hall pushing a cart, like a team of three-quarters rushing down the pitch. I was too worried to consider that maybe I’d been watching too much rugby.

I watched the team of nurses peel off into a room while I slowly drifted towards the nursing station, manned now by a solitary and rather harried-looking woman. “I’m looking for Thomas Nightingale,” I said, swallowing dryly. “Is he…?”

She glanced at the computer in front of her. “Room 306. Down the hall to the right.”

My heartrate dropped like a stone, edging towards something resembling a regular beat. I felt shaky, shoulders trembling with the searing aftermath of the adrenaline spike. I did my best to walk down the hall in a straight line, ignoring the controlled chaos in room 303 and passing on down the hall.

The lights were only half-on in Nightingale’s room, blinds drawn and machinery pulsing silently. I’d spent enough time in hospital lately to know that his vitals looked decent at least, even though he was laid out unmoving on his back with white gauze wrapped around his head. 

For an unconscious man with a hole in his head, he looked good. His colour was alright, and there was no strain of discomfort or exhaustion. He was hooked up to an IV but it was just clear fluids, no blood. 

It was good to see him. So good it hurt just a little, relief handling my heart with a kitten’s claws. Just to know he was still breathing, was likely to stay that way, was all I needed. I don’t think I’d ever been so relieved. 

“Sir?”

He didn’t move, not even when I let my hand fall over his. His skin was warm. Gently, I tightened my grip. 

I stood there for a long time, just the two of us in the dark hospital room.

  
***

Nightingale didn’t wake that evening. I left eventually, walking back to the Folly and turning in to bed. I didn’t want to sleep – it seemed disloyal somehow, after all the pain and fear of the day. But I was exhausted, and despite apparent lack of camaraderie I was out almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The next morning I went back as soon as I had scarfed down breakfast, and found Dr Walid at Nightingale’s bedside. “I heard they released you,” he said, seeing me. “How’s the shoulder treating you?”

“Fine.” Actually it was aching a bit, but that’s not the kind of thing a right-minded man admits. Not in a room full of needles. “How is he?”

Dr Walid glanced at Nightingale, still lying unconscious beneath the light blanket. “No change.”

“He’ll be alright, won’t he?” I had hoped he’d be awake already. Finding him unconscious was surprising, and it lit a little flame of fear in me. 

“He has strong odds. But it’ll take him waking up before we know for certain. Should be sometime today.”

“I can stay. For a while,” I added, suddenly feeling overly-solicitous. Dr Walid smiled. 

“Good.”

  
***

There was a chair in the room and after a few minutes’ standing at Nightingale’s bedside I pulled it over. I read the news on my phone for a while, played a few games, checked my Facebook. I listened to music for another hour, mostly streaming – I’ve blown up enough phones not to invest a lot of time transferring my mp3s to them anymore. Just when I was starting to consider heading off in search of something to eat, I noticed a flicker in the vital stats monitor at Nightingale’s bedside.

I stopped the playback on my phone, pulling out the earbuds. Nightingale’s eyelashes fluttered, brow creasing. His eyes opened a sliver and he looked over at me. “Peter?”

My heart skipped a beat. “Yes, sir. You’re alright. You’re in hospital.” I reached out without conscious thought, and before I could stop myself had taken his hand. He didn’t seem to notice. 

“What… happened?”

“The Folly was attacked, sir. By two chimeras. You got one, and the second one got you. You took a pretty nasty blow to the head.”

His eyes closed. “Thank you,” he whispered.

I frowned, puzzled. “For what?”

“Being here.” His fingers tightened around mine minutely before loosening, his head rolling to the side as he drifted into sleep again. 

I sat there with my hand in his, wondering what the hell to make of it all. Or rather, how much to make of it.

  
***

I went back to the Folly for lunch and to walk Toby – I didn’t like the idea of leaving either him or Molly alone for too long. One of them might eat the other, and I knew who my money was on. After that I checked my computer for any new information on the case – nothing was coming in to either me or Nightingale, which made sense; as soon as you’re involved in a suspect’s death you get cut out of the paper trail pdq.

Nightingale was awake when I got back to his room, lying on his back staring up at the ceiling like it might reveal the meaning of life. I stopped in the doorway, uncertainty welling up in me like a dark, opaque sea. We were navigating the tricky, unseen territory of a changing relationship, and I wasn’t sure of my footing. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if we were on the same page. 

Nightingale turned to look at me. The moment he caught sight of me his eyes softened – with more than relief. 

In that moment, I knew we were on the same page. 

“Sir,” I said, coming to a stop at his bedside. The chair was still there but I stood, feeling awkward. His eyes ran over me, pausing at the raised padding of the bandages over my shoulders. 

“You’re alright?”

“Just a few stitches,” I assured him. He nodded gently, then blinked a little dizzily – a combination of the operation and the painkillers, doubtless. It was a moment before his eyes focused properly again. “And the second chimera?”

“Molly got her.”

He sighed. “Is she alright?”

I presumed he didn’t mean the chimera; that pretty much went without saying. “She’s worried about you.”

He had to pause as he answered, his breathing slow and shallow. “It’s kind of you to interpret it as such… but more likely she regrets her actions… or the necessity of them.”

“I was worried too. This has got Seawoll on the warpath. They’re already talking about an official investigation; the Commissioner may be involved again.” I sat down, knees beginning to twinge nervously. “And…” My hands twitched, looking for something to hold, some way to regain my rapidly dwindling control.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Peter,” said Nightingale, kindly.

I looked him right back in the eye. “Yeah. I do.” 

He swallowed slowly, staring back at me in silence. “Perhaps I should say, you _shouldn’t_ worry about me.”

“Because you’re my boss? My senior? My mentor?” Still not saying the ‘m’ word.

He smiled, a long sad smile – the smile of a man who has lived through a lifetime of loss. “Because I doubt very much I could make you happy.” 

My hand crept up to the blankets, fingers seeking purchase. “Isn’t that my decision to make? I don’t want to lose you; not to a forced retirement, not to a broken skull.”

“Certainly one is more permanent than the other,” demurred Nightingale, but genuine humour was melting into his smile now. “I told you before, Peter, I do not plan to abandon you.”

My questing fingers found his, almost without my conscious intention; I shivered a little at the warmth of his skin against mine. “Good.”

  
***

It was two days before they let Nightingale out of the hospital; I brought the Jag over despite the horrendous traffic and chauffeured him back to the Folly. We didn’t hold hands or anything soppy and sentimental – although I might have been more solicitous than strictly necessary when helping him into the car.

Molly and Toby were waiting in the scullery for our return, although frankly I think Toby was just hoping for a walk. As soon as Nightingale crossed the threshold Molly curtsied deeply – far more so than the little bob she’d given me when we had first met. Nightingale stopped dead, frowning a little. 

“You’ve nothing to reproach yourself for,” Nightingale was saying softly to her, as I called Toby and led him out of the room to give them a minute to themselves. “This is your home, and we…” I slipped out of earshot, and so didn’t hear the rest of his speech to her. But whatever it was it cheered her right up; that evening she laid the whole table for dinner with a full set of newly-polished silver cutlery, and served for it all as well. 

Nightingale tired easily. His skin was sallow and his head was still wrapped in white gauze; Dr Walid had promised to return in a few days to ensure it was safe to remove. After dinner I brought him into his study and left him there with a warm cup of tea; when I returned later he had dozed off in his armchair. I stood watching him for a few minutes – asleep he looks … not younger, but less guarded. Without the stiff deportment he wears like a shield. I wondered if it was a face he would ever show me of his own volition; I could only hope.

I returned an hour later to find him awake and leafing through a book. 

“If you’re tired, I can help you upstairs,” I said, having taken some time considering how best to suggest to my boss that it was time for him to go to bed. He looked up at me, an instant of surprise fading quickly to acceptance. Nightingale isn’t a bad patient – he rarely refuses doctor’s orders or makes a fuss at taking things easy – he just forgets to take care of himself if not reminded. 

He pulled himself up carefully from the chair; I stepped over hurriedly to steady him when he wavered. He leant in towards me, smelling of fresh linen and hospital soap, so close I could feel the heat of his body even through the intervening layers of fabric. 

“Sir,” I said, an embarrassing amount of longing in my tone.

“Thomas,” corrected Nightingale, eyes momentarily closed as he leant against me.

“Thomas,” I said, my breath against his ear. He shivered and opened his eyes. 

“Did you really believe I would leave this? Leave you?” 

I swallowed, and he clearly saw the uncertainty in my face. 

“A master never abandons his apprentice, Peter. And I will never abandon you.” He leant his forehead against my temple, slipping his arms around me to hold us close. 

“Shouldn’t I be the one saying that?”

“No,” said Nightingale, very straightforwardly. And then, with a smile, “But I don’t fault you for thinking it.”

I helped him up to bed where his pyjamas were already waiting for him, lying neatly on the bedcovers. 

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, and beat a departure while I still could.

  
***

Shockingly Nightingale was up before me the next morning, sitting at the breakfast table with the paper and a cup of coffee, his clothes as crisp and perfect as always, as though nothing had happened. I noticed he was mostly skimming the articles; true reading would probably have to wait for his concussion to abate a bit further.

He did smile when I came in, though.

“You’re looking better,” I said. 

“Thank you; apparently a blood-letting agreed with me.” He watched me step over to the sideboard, grey eyes relaxed. “As soon as you’re done, we had better go down and check the wards. I don’t believe they would have been damaged by infiltration of a creature with a fluid thaumatological presence, but best to make certain.”

“Fluid thaumatological presence – you mean like a shape shifter?” I asked, serving myself. “Except for magic?” It was more or less what I had supposed; to hear I was close to something actually practical was both gratifying and a bit frightening. 

“Broadly, yes. Although any practitioner has a _signare_ when they use their magic, they also have a passive presence, a _praesentia_ , which marks the existence of their magic. Some of your riverine friends can sense it – smell it, as they say. The Folly’s wards are built to accept practitioners whom it recognizes, and disallow entrance to those it does not.”

“The guest list,” I said, remembering the Betrayal of Which We Do Not Speak.

Nightingale nodded. “Precisely. Although Molly’s way of patrolling it is somewhat less… subtle than the Folly’s own innate wards.” He took a sip of his coffee.

I fed myself and Toby, and then we picked up and went downstairs. Nightingale let me find the secret room – I did it faster this time – and fire up the magical lines with my werelight. As he had predicted they were all white. No hint of the deep crimson that had stained them the other day. 

“Then we’re alright,” I said; Nightingale smiled.

“Yes. For now. But it would be prudent to increase our vigilance all the same.”

“Constant vigilance,” I said with a smile; Nightingale nodded vaguely, reference flying right over his head. 

We returned upstairs shoulder to shoulder, Nightingale’s hand resting lightly between my shoulder blades. It felt right.

  
***

It was three days later that I felt it; a subtle shift in the Folly. It felt like a breath of wind, the opening of a window to let in new air. I’d never felt anything like it before, not even when the chimeras invaded.

I dropped the tennis ball I had been tossing for Toby – Molly’s cooking is definitely affecting his trim canine waistline – and ran upstairs. This time I didn’t go for the secret room, didn’t go to the back kitchen to find Molly. I went straight to the study. 

If someone was breaking it again, they would go through me before they got to Nightingale.

I found him standing on the near side of his desk, one hand upraised, the bandages gone from his head.

“Thomas?” I asked, nearly skidding to a stop on the ancient carpet. My lungs were burning from my break-neck sprint up the stairs.

“You felt it,” he said, smiling. He seemed different – strong, forceful. Content. 

I nodded cautiously. 

“It would seem,” he said, opening his hand, “tutors will not be necessary.”

Floating on the palm of his hand was a perfect werelight. _Well fuck me_ , I thought, staring for a moment. “What – how?” I stammered. 

Nightingale closed his hand and the bobbing light disappeared. He closed his eyes wearily, then opened them again to look at me. “I suppose I ought never to have doubted it. It hasn’t been willing to let me go for all these years, why should it now?”

“But you thought it had,” I said, feeling slightly poleaxed. “You thought it was gone forever.”

Nightingale canted his head to the side, still staring at me. “I considered,” he said, slowly, “that perhaps you were here now. Perhaps my work was done.” He said it as though there were some overarching logic to the magic that had so altered his life, some consciousness, some plan. 

“Maybe it just needed time, or for some of the blood to be drained off – maybe even just the second blow,” I suggested, searching for a less eldritch alternative. 

“Perhaps,” said Nightingale, although I could tell he didn’t agree. “In the grand scheme of things it hardly matters, what is done is done.” Sometimes his lack of scientific curiosity still astounds me. But on this occasion I felt only relief. He truly was back – and he truly would stay.

“Welcome back,” I said. And then I kissed him.

END


End file.
